Focus On Yourself

What is the cause of most of our misery? Trying to control things that are out of our control. What is out of our control? Other people. How many times have we been let down, disappointed, and hurt by others? How often do we get frustrated at others for not doing what we think they should be doing? How often do we compare ourselves to others? How often do we try to manipulate, coerce, and deceive others to get them to do what we want them to do? We all do this, even if we aren't consciously aware of the fact that we are. As long as we care what others do and think and feel, we will always try to manipulate them into doing what we think best.

Who are our favorite people? Who are the people that we like the most? It's the people who do what we think they should be doing, and the people who treat us the way we think they should be treating us. The people who we believe that we can control or manipulate. Who are our least favorite people? Who are the people that we can't stand? It's the people who don't live their lives the way we think they should be living them. It's the people who don't treat us the way we think they should be treating us. It's the people that we know we can't control or manipulate. If you put any thought into this, you will see it to be true. 

One of the most infuriating things for us is when someone will not do what we believe they should be doing. Or when someone won't believe what we think they should believe. There are wars fought over this. A country doesn't do what another country thinks they should or believe the same thing and a war starts. Everyone who holds onto core beliefs, despises anyone who holds onto opposing core beliefs. It's a fact of dualism. You can't have good without evil, you can't have right without wrong, and you can't have God without Satan, plain and simple. As long as you believe you are right, there will always be those who are wrong. As long as there are those who are wrong, you will want to change them, control them, or manipulate them. 

It's a guarantee that you can think of someone right now who you don't like, simply because they aren't doing what you think they should be doing or because they don't believe what you think they should believe. As long as we hold onto the false notion that we have any control whatsoever over others and their beliefs and actions we will remain in misery and frustration. Believing that we have any control whatsoever on other people is simply an illusion we tell ourselves to convince ourselves that we have a sense of control. Why do we feel this insatiable need to control others? Why do we judge others? Why do we even care what anyone else does? It's because we don't have control over ourselves. We focus so much on others, so we can avoid the focus being on ourselves. 

We have this perpetual habit of avoiding looking at ourselves. We all have aspects of ourselves that we are terrified of, that we don't want to face, that we don't believe we can face. We all have shame, remorse, regret, and suppressed emotions and memories. This is referred to as our shadow self or our unconscious. We are pure awareness; we are always aware all the time. When we sleep at night and dream, we are aware of our dreams, when we sleep at night and don't dream, we are aware of our unconsciousness. When we are awake, we are always aware of something, we choose what we want to focus our awareness on. We choose all sorts of things to focus our awareness on. We focus or awareness on everything from social media to hobbies to our thoughts and onto other people and everything in between. Most of us will focus our awareness literally anywhere except within our own selves.

We find the idea of looking within ourselves to be truly terrifying and overwhelming, we have no idea what we might find hiding within ourselves. There are infinite things that we are afraid we may uncover if we look within so we simply avoid looking within. We tell ourselves stories about ourselves. We tell ourselves the type of person that we are, the type of person that we want to be all the while never actually willing to look and find out if we are. We tell ourselves that we are moral and good. Deep down most of us believe that we are a good person. How many times have we heard this. Someone gets cancer and says "I don't deserve this, I'm a good person" maybe you yourself have said this. We are terrified of truly looking at ourselves and discovering that maybe we aren't in fact a good person. This can also go the other way, whereas we believe that we are a bad person and are terrified of finding out that we are actually good. 

Any core belief that you hold about yourself, any idea about yourself that you tell yourself, and any label that you put on yourself is a prison you are putting yourself into. These create illusions about oneself that in turn create the fear of looking at thine own self and discovering these to be false. We believe that our core beliefs are who we actually are, we believe these concepts and labels to be who we truly are. We believe that if we lose these core beliefs that we will in fact lose ourselves, that we will vanish into oblivion. Anytime anyone is forced to face a core belief about themselves that they aren't ready to face, it will lead to severe anxiety and a whole host of other mental health issues. When someone is ready and willing to face their core beliefs head on, they will always walk right through them and discover there was never anything there. It was always just a concept about oneself, an image of oneself, an idea of oneself.

Your true self is not an image, it's not a symbol, it's not an idea, it's not a belief, and it's not a concept. Your true self cannot be explained, it cannot be put into words, it cannot be labeled, it cannot be expressed. As long as you have an idea of yourself or a word that you use to describe yourself or an image of yourself, you are holding onto a false version of yourself that does not exist. As long as you cling to the false version of yourself that does not exist, you will remain terrified of looking at it and discovering it isn't real staying trapped in your prison that you have created of yourself. The kicker is, once you are willing to look at this false image of yourself and see through it, you are truly free, you will no longer care what anyone else does or thinks or believes because you will know that they are also just trapped in a prison of their own making. A prison that isn't even real, that only they believe to be real. The gateless gate.

Look at a tree. What do you see? Do you see the tree, or do you see the word tree in your mind? Do you see all your ideas, memories, perspectives, and experiences within that tree or are you able to just see the tree for what it is? If you truly saw the tree for what it was you would not be able to express it, you would not be able to put it into words or thoughts or ideas. When you take a picture of a tree, you know that picture is not the tree, you know that the picture is just an image of the tree. When you paint or draw a tree, you know that painting or drawing isn't the tree, it is simply your memory of the tree, your perspective of the tree. Every label, idea, concept, memory, and belief that we have about ourselves is just like the photo or painting or drawing of a tree. Our ideas about ourselves are not ourselves but simply an image of ourselves that we have created based on our experiences and perspectives. Except we believe that the photo of ourselves that we have created is actually who we are, we fail to see past the photo to our true selves.

As long as you focus your attention on others instead of yourself, you will never be freed from your self created prison. As long as you avoid looking at the image that you have created of yourself, you will remain imprisoned. As long as you remain imprisoned you will believe that you are in fact imprisoned. When you are willing to look at the image of yourself and realize that it is only an image that you have created, you will be freed from your false imprisonment. You will be able to walk right through the gateless gate. Love and Peace!

19. Together we will disappear into the Presence beyond the veil, not to be lost but found; not to be seen but known. (ACIM, T-19.IV-D.19:1)